


What Wendy Wants

by Wakeywakey_bigmistakey



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21816133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wakeywakey_bigmistakey/pseuds/Wakeywakey_bigmistakey
Summary: Wendy has just left Kay and is trying to figure out what she wants. Then she runs into someone unexpectedly.
Relationships: Wendy Carr/Debbie Mitford, Wendy Carr/Kay Manz (mentioned)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	What Wendy Wants

She heard the door close behind her and with it, her relationship to Kay. It was an odd sensation. Kay, who simultaneously symbolized so much hope for what she could become and so much guilt for what she was not.

Wendy poured herself a healthy glass of wine. The apartment seemed emptier than usual. Stacks of tunafish cans only reminded her of failed attempts at filling it with something other than the pre-placed furniture. 

A loud bang from an exhaustion pipe startled her so badly that the wine glass slipped between her fingers. Her breathing took minutes to calm down in the absolute silence. Wendy had never felt the need for a radio so acutely, something to stave off the fact that it was just her. The ridiculous magazine on the coffee table only served as a reminder.

Padding over the floor, she stopped with the broom in hand and stared at the broken glass. Glittering shards across the tiles. Such small things to bring her heart twisting in her ribcage. 

Leaving the broom where she had stood, Wendy got dressed instead. It was not her usual style, but something like a more casual version of that. Slacks, dark enough to look black but really marine. A t-shirt she had bought nearly a decade earlier but never worn; plain white. 

Looking in the mirror, she saw a different person from herself. Raising her head, she looked defiant. Confident in the assured way she mostly knew from the men in her life. 

Though they had never been there together, Kay had ended up telling her about some of the places for people like them. Back then it had mostly been to tease her, to hold over her head the awkwardness of the conversation she had struck up to talk to Kay.

Without considering it further, that’s where her car took her. The place was so incognito she very nearly missed it. All the shades were pulled, with very little light seeping out. What gave it away was the music. 

Wendy couldn’t really explain it, but she knew the music from her days before Anneliese (so long ago. Had it not changed or was there really such a thing as a lesbian aura around the door?)

Before entering, she made it to feeling self-conscious. She had never moved much in circles outside of the academic world and this place gave off very different vibes from the polished wood and hallowed halls of higher learning. 

The door resisted. Inside, there was a small half circle of heavy curtain that she had to pull aside too before entering the main room. Not especially spacious, there was a small dance floor and stools lined up along the desk of the bar itself. 

Wendy fidgeted a bit with the keys in her pocket. Nervous energy coursed through her. 

Sitting down at the bar, she took as discreet of a look as she could at the other patrons. There was an invisible line down the room separating the dance floor from the bar area. The dance floor was dominated by couples that looked a lot like what pop culture told her they would in a place like this: suits dancing with floral dresses, dress shoes carefully avoiding heels. 

It stung a bit, to see people so calm in themselves and each other. Couples so clearly resting in their place in it all, in each other and in their identities. She felt so fresh, so undefined: what did she know, really, about her place in this world? Anneliese dominated her identity for so many years, shaping so much of how she saw herself and how she interacted with those around her.

Then Kay, who changed so much but defined so little. Who had posed questions but never answered them.

Wendy fit in much better in the stools. Along the bar, people looked more like her. A little afraid, maybe, but mostly curious and hungry. People who looked as confused as she felt. Skirts and short hair, professionals clearly afraid of running into a known face. People who hid.

The first glass of wine was quickly followed by another, then drinks. The woman next to her was Wendy’s age, maybe a bit younger. She was sweet. Awkward. Also very clearly checking her out, which made something undefinable swell inside her. 

Her name was Kate, Wendy found out a bit late in the conversation. No last name, understandably. Wendy introduced herself as Anna without really knowing why, except she was drunker than she had intended to be and wanted to see if she could get away with it.

Kate’s short hair pulled at her lips, until she realized that she was smiling at Kay’s joke about all her exes going to the same barber. The thought sobered her, if only a little. 

It was interesting, talking to Kate. It wasn’t that they talked about anything in particular, but mainly what they did not talk about. Jobs. Names, Friends. In her haze it took her a while to figure out what was going on: they were getting to know each other without revealing details that could be linked back to them outside this microcosm of a bar.

Someone tapped her shoulder. Spinning the stool she sat on, Wendy realized that she was even drunker than she had given herself credit for. It was bordering on sloppy. The room spun long after the stool had stopped doing so. 

For a moment, she couldn’t place the face in front of her. It was definitely someone she had met before. 

“Hi,” said the face, with its long dark hair. She was wearing a dress with large squares of orange on a background of blue. 

“Hi,” Wendy answered, drawing out the  _ i  _ in hopes that the familiar stranger would re-introduce herself.

“Debbie, remember? Debbie Mitford.”

It definitely rang a distant bell. It clicked into place in an instant. “Holden’s Debbie?” asked Wendy.

Wendy felt her heart in her throat. Of all the people she could have run into right then, right there. Debbie looked like she had bitten a sour lemon and Wendy could already her the questions, the accusations, the outing and the end. The end of her career, of her entire foundation, she didn’t know.

“It’s just Debbie now, actually.”

Wendy looked at her. For a long moment, neither of them said anything. 

When Kate excused herself, Wendy had completely forgotten she was there and Debbie seemed just as surprised.

“I hope to see you again, Anna,” she threw over her shoulder on her way to the floor. 

It was as if that broke the ice sheet that had formed between them. Debbie tried to contain her smile at first, but failed miserably. “ _ Anna _ ?” she asked, trying to suppress the giggles that fought their way up her throat. “Why on earth would you say that your name was  _ Anna _ ?”

Wendy felt herself relax, if only a bit. Debbie was looking at her expectantly.

“Well I had to say something, and to be honest,” said Wendy, leaning in closer and lowering her voice. “She wasn’t really someone I needed to be able to find me again.”

Debbie laughed again, more in earnest this time. Wendy was silently cursing her mouth for running off from her and basically outing herself to someone with a connection, whatever it was, to one of her closest coworkers.

She couldn’t, however, keep her runaway mouth from laughing along. It continued for much longer than the comment warranted, but she was more than tipsy and so it seemed, was Debbie. She could also be a bit high, Wendy realized, when she saw the glaze over her unusually red eyes. 

None of them asked what the other was doing there, but the conversation ran easily, even enjoyably. Wendy had liked her when she met her as Holden’s girlfriend, but she had to admit that she liked her even better when she wasn’t.

“Want to take a breath of fresh air?” 

Wendy nodded, smoky-induced scratching pulling up her throat like sandpaper. When she got up, her legs wobbled discreetly while she noticed that there was barely any patrons left. That it must have been late, much later than when their conversation started.

The chilly air outside was delightful. Wendy felt more awake, less hazy. Still inebriated to a definitively unprofessional degree, but it had stopped bothering her. 

They sat on a curb and Wendy felt younger than she had in years.

Debbie offered her a cigarette and they both laughed. She didn’t turn it down though. A cigarette was, ironically, just what she needed; she just needed it to come from itself and not all the air surrounding her. 

Debbie held out a lighter and it gave Wendy a chance to quickly study her face. She was quite taking, really. It wasn’t that she hadn’t realized when they first met, but then it had been under such different circumstances. Another world. A world where Wendy had immediately discarded the thought.

Now, it made sense. It was allowed. It was, if the eyes staring not so subtly at her lips while pretending not to be was anything to go by, perhaps even reciprocated. 

They sat in silence for a good while, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Not at all. Wendy smoked her cigarette with a buzz filling her body that she couldn’t determine whether was just alcohol. 

When she turned to say something, she was startled by how close Debbie’s face was to hers.

“I need you to know-” said Debbie, voice low “-that Holden and I are over. That he is not someone I talk to about what I do, who I meet.”

Wendy nodded. It felt tame and like she should do something else, something more. She just couldn’t make her body obey her commands and was frozen in place instead. 

That didn’t matter, as it turned out. Debbie’s gaze slid to her lips and she tilted her head in question. 

Wendy had to force her mouth to form the words, to let any sound escape her throat. “Not here.”

Debbie nodded and Wendy feared that the moment would pass. That she had wasted what little opportunity she had with this woman.

Until Debbie spoke up again, leaning in entirely too close and her sultry voice lighting Wendy’s body on fire with the images it created: “Then where?”

**Author's Note:**

> I might write another chapter of this at some point, but for now i'll just leave it as a one-shot


End file.
